Here are four links from the weekend about the WWL or Evil Empire or whatever you want to call ESPN:

Let’s start with a very well-written take on ESPN and the book from the Wall Street Journal, with a random shot at PTI (at the end):

If there is a major failing in “Those Guys Have All the Fun,” it is that no one wants to ponder the full implications of this shift. …

By contrast, relatively little attention is given to the conflicts inherent in a network being the largest promoter of sports, the most powerful partner of sports leagues and the largest journalistic shop covering them. A curious reader might want to hear why the quantity and quality of coverage of such sports as soccer and hockey seems to vary depending on how deeply their parent leagues are partnered with the network. But to wrestle with such questions would require introspection from ESPN’s key players and a realistic appraisal of the integrity and quality of their product. You won’t find much of that here.

Why? Nobody’s probed that angle. Another a question was raised by the Washington Post this weekend – where’s the critical analysis from the authors who conduct a billion interviews with ESPN employees?:

This is essentially an oral history, with the authors contributing occasional commentary. So the book lacks a narrative voice to set the scene, describe the characters, pull the reader along. Authors are not just tape recorders with expense accounts. They need to analyze, criticize, validate their characters. Here, they’re often missing in action.

Without Ebersol in the game, ESPN is widely seen as the network with the best shot at stealing Olympic gold. While network president George Bodenheimer has no designs on becoming the next Ebersol—the ESPN chief is all business where Ebersol is renowned for his personal narratives and weepy profiles of Olympians—a win in Lausanne would effectively sideline broadcast TV’s sports profile.

A ’roid-ripped, cash-generating machine, ESPN practically has a monopoly on big-time sports, boasting the rights to the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. With its triumphant coverage of the 2010 World Cup, the network demonstrated it can handle a massive global event.